A Third Company is Suing Maryland over Cannabis License Rejection 

A third company whose license to grow medical cannabis in Maryland was rejected, has filed a legal action against state regulators claiming that a law calling for diversity in the industry was not followed.

Alternative Medicine Maryland filed their suit Monday. They are asking for a judge to freeze the emerging medical cannabis industry until the Maryland Medical Cannabis Commission can take the necessary steps to ensure ethnic diversity.

John Pica, the attorney representing Alternative Medicine, said an “easy way” to correct this is to re-evaluate the applicants or simply issue more licenses.

“The legislature made it very clear that that commission was supposed to seek racial diversity in awarding the licenses, and they completely ignored their responsibility,” Pica said in the report.

Maryland’s medical cannabis laws call for regulators to “actively seek to achieve” racial and ethnic diversity when approving applications, but the commission did not take the applicants’ races into consideration when evaluating the applications. The commission referenced a letter from the Attorney General which infers that it is unconstitutional to take a person’s race into consideration when reviewing their application.

Fifteen companies were given preliminary approval to cultivate cannabis, but none of them are headed by African Americans. The Legislative Black Caucus of Maryland said that they will bring forward emergency legislation, which could include restarting the entire program, to address this issue.

Alternative Medicine Maryland, which is 80 percent owned by African Americans, is the third cannabis company to seek legal recourse after being denied a license in the state. The other two organizations said they were denied in an effort to expand the cannabis industry throughout the state. The estimate the business is worth tens of millions of dollars.

The cannabis commission had previously stated that they were dedicated to finding alternative methods to diversify the industry, but did not want the state to suffer additional delays for a program they approved over three years ago.